Raspberry Overnight Oats

I’ve been having a real problem the past couple of years with breakfast. My whole life, I’ve never really had a good, healthy breakfast (except on the weekends) and I feel like it’s really critical to start out my day. Especially because most mornings, I wake up hungry. I try to listen to my body and I feel like according to how I feel, breakfast is important for me. When I was in high school, I’d eat a Special Kay snack bar- not even a meal replacement bar. When I was in college, I’d eat eggs. I’ve always eaten eggs on the weekend- usually an omelet. But during the week, it’s tough when I get up at the very last second in the morning because I just don’t want to get out of bed. I was doing shakes for awhile, but I find myself gravitating towards more fruits in the morning instead of veggies, which isn’t great for my sugar; I tried eggs, but I don’t like to eat them every day and it kind of made the weekend eggs less special. I was reading a lot about overnight oats a few months ago, but never got the chance to try them. Ever since I changed my diet, I’ve been researching more and more things that are naturally gluten free- oats is one of them!

Are you surprised? I sure was.

Oats are inherently gluten free. A lot of the name brand packages can’t label their oats as gluten free because of cross contamination with wheat, barley, rye, etc. in their factories. As I was researching oats, I really liked that they are “slow release” carbs- so it actually takes about 3 hours to release all the carbs into your body (don’t quote me on the that). I picked up a big bag of GF oats in the store over the weekend and made my first batch last night. I used a recipe from http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/overnightoats honestly because it was the first thing that popped up on Google when I searched for a recipe. But man- it was GOOD! And it kept me full pretty much until lunch!

Above are all the ingredients I used. I usually get unsweetened almond milk, but they were all out at Shop Rite! I settled for this and you can definitely taste the sugar. I figured for my purposes in making oatmeal this week, it’d suffice.

I simply layered the ingredients together in my mason jar, stirred them all together and popped in the fridge overnight. It was so easy and quick, I was a little skeptical. Before I left this morning, I added a dollop of almond milk. I warmed it up for a few seconds in the microwave at work and enjoyed every bite! I was so impressed and now I’m totally hooked. I can’t wait to try a new combination next week!